


Sorry for the Shock

by Mallory_Clayborne



Category: RWBY
Genre: (not explicitly stated but Clover is written as having OCD), And you'll see that it sets up for Fairgame to happen when Clover's grown, But it's Clover 'meeting Qrow' for the first time, Cloves is like 14 or something but I didn't pay too much attention to his exact age, Cloves's family is him and his parents and an older sister :), Electricity, Fairgame, Gen, Not technically shippy, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Pre-Canon, fairgameweek2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:35:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23221048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mallory_Clayborne/pseuds/Mallory_Clayborne
Summary: Day 4 of Fairgame Week 2020 - prompt of 'birds'. This is pre-ship: Fairgame is only set up for the future. It's more a character study on Clover, if anything.When you are supposedly a walking good luck charm, how long can you stand it before you begin to see any bad event as a sign you're not trying hard enough?Clover watches as something he dreads happens, but it definitely doesn't work out how he expects it to.
Relationships: Qrow Branwen & Clover Ebi
Kudos: 23





	Sorry for the Shock

**Author's Note:**

> This one's posted on time in my own timezone, what a surprise. Clover is written with OCD. He is caught up in the mindset that bad things that happen are his fault because he hasn't done enough to prevent them (this is massively exacerbated by his Semblance). His compulsion manifests largely in electrical safety - the Ebi family home is quite close to a pylon. He needs to check the power outlets in the house frequently to know if they're off when they ought to be.
> 
> Sorry it isn't more shippy. I actually debated whether or not to post this as part of Fairgame week (even though I did write it specifically today) but have decided to go ahead since the intention is this is the first meeting that will form a part of their bonding when they get together when Clover is an adult. Apologies if you came here looking for them to already be together.

A quiet alarm went off, just loud enough to wake the one person it was designed for in the silence of the night. It was 02:00, and Clover reached out quickly to shut off the alarm, lest it wake anyone else up. He pushed back his duvet and sat up – the room was dark, just a small amount of moonlight and streetlight seeping in through the minute crack between the curtains. He stifled a yawn and got out of bed on the right-hand-side: normally he got out on the left, but that floorboard had started creaking a few days ago and he couldn’t fix it until he and his father had time enough to pull the carpet up. As it was, then, he stood up on the wrong side of his bed and shuddered at the feeling.

Clover was dressed in white socks, soft black shorts and a pale grey hoodie. He reached his chest of drawers and took each artefact from the top and put them in the correct pockets. A smooth round stone, an inch in diameter, painted red with black spots to resemble a ladybird, went into his right back pocket. A seven of hearts, extracted from a deck he’d been gifted five years ago now, went into his left back pocket. His rabbit’s foot, fur gently matted from how much he handled it, went into his right side pocket. A small, laminated card encasing four pressed four-leaf-clovers went into his left side pocket with his scroll. Finally, the heaviest, his horseshoe, was put in the big front pocket of his hoodie. He nodded to himself.

He started in his bedroom. Three plug sockets - one by his mirror and his chest of drawers, with an extension lead next to it. He knelt down to check it. The socket was empty and the switch was off, and the extension lead lay next to the socket, all the switches off and nothing plugged into it, not his TV, not his PlayStation, not his hairdryer. Satisfied, he crossed the room towards the other two sockets, one that was permanently occupied as the source for the power to the motion-activated floodlight in the garden, and so it had to remain plugged in and turned on. Initially, Clover's parents had suggested he swapped rooms with his sister, so that he wasn't in a room where something had to stay permanently on - he'd violently disagreed, saying he'd much prefer it to be where he could keep an eye on it. His parents had looked at each other, but had agreed to leave Clover where he was. The other socket was empty and off. With a gentle sigh, Clover stood, and then headed for his bedroom door, which he was careful to keep the hinges of well-maintained.

The landing was slightly lighter than Clover’s bedroom, since the small window had no covering, but it was still rather dark. He glanced at the four doors other than his own on the landing. One was slightly ajar: his parents’ room. One was completely open: the study. Two were closed: River’s bedroom, and the bathroom. The bathroom had no electrical sockets, so he didn’t need to check. The study was easiest for access, but had the most sockets, a mess of extension leads that Clover needed to check. He did that first, and his heart lurched dangerously when he discovered that the document shredder was still plugged in. The socket was switched off, but Clover’s hand shook as he unplugged the device.

Then he needed to check his parents’ room. The carpet was thick and soft, muffling Clover’s steps as he very gently pushed the door open wider and crept into the bedroom. His dad was on the side of the bed closer to the door, breathing slow and heavy, and Clover knelt down just next to his dad’s shoulder, before shuffling carefully until he was lying on his stomach. He could feel the metal of the horseshoe digging up into him, but he found it more comforting than anything. Quietly, in no rush, Clover wriggled himself under the bed, dust prickling the back of his throat. When he was solidly in the middle, after about two minutes, he shifted his hand until he could extract his scroll, to use the screen to dimly illuminate the wall.

Both the plug sockets here, half-obstructed by the frame of his parents’ bed, were empty and switched off, like they had been every day and every night for the past three years, when this bedroom had been redecorated and rearranged. Clover let out a gentle breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding, before starting to wriggle out from under the bed on his mom’s side. When he was close to the edge of the bed, he felt something bump against the side of his head. Twisting himself the best he could to see what it was, he saw his mom’s hand draped over the side of the bed, and her fingertips had brushed him. He shuffled his body down so he could emerge without nudging her.

The other plug sockets in Clover’s parents’ room were much more easily accessible, and neither of his parents stirred as he checked each of the other four, finding them all empty and switched off. He slipped back out onto the landing in near-perfect silence, and moved to stand in front of his sister’s bedroom door. A year older than him, River had an increasingly common habit of shutting her door all the way when she went upstairs after dinner (or family time, which followed dinner every other day). Clover didn’t think it was malicious against him, simply that she wanted more privacy in general, but it made him worry. It made him worry that she was in there without any easy way for him to come in and check the sockets.

Clover took a breath and held it, before twisting the handle on River’s bedroom and letting himself in. The room was bathed in a blue-ish glow, but River was lying down and still: she must have been watching something, but had fallen asleep without turning off the TV. Clover felt his heart start thumping harder in his chest. He tried to keep calm as he crossed quickly to the extension lead where her TV was usually plugged in, and indeed it was – the only thing, and he needed to act quickly. He scanned the room for the remote so he could put the TV in standby, the turn it off, then turn off the power and unplug everything. He saw it nestled in River’s duvet, just next to her hand. He took it, not brushing against his sister, and turned off the show, throwing the room into darkness.

He couldn’t wait for his vision to adjust. River had the same model of TV as Clover did, so he knew approximately where to slide his hand to turn it off completely, and he found a fraction of relief when he felt the switch click in his fingers and the red blinking light below the screen went out. The only light in the room now was the faint orange glow of the still-powered extension lead, so Clover dropped the TV remote back onto the end of River’s bed and then knelt, before crawling across to the extension lead and finally clicking the power to the TV plug off. Clover took a harsh breath, and then shut off the power to the extension, and then unplugged the TV from the lead and the lead from the wall. River would be safe now. Clover stood and watched her for half a minute. She was still seemingly asleep, but her breathing wasn’t as even as it had been when Clover had come into the room. He slipped out as quietly as he could, leaving her be.

Clover had to repeat the whole process downstairs now. Four and a half rooms – the downstairs hallway had two sockets – where he would almost certainly encounter _something_ he’d been careless and missed earlier, thus jeopardising his family. As he quietly padded downstairs, he let his hands drift into his hoodie pocket and rubbed his fingers against the horseshoe sitting in there. Now with no worry of waking his parents or sister with the light from his scroll, he put the torch on and used it to quicken his pace as he examined each socket in turn. The hallway was clear, so he proceeded into what his mom and dad had taken to jokily calling the ‘drawing room’ (it was just one of two sitting rooms, except this one had an upright piano in it these days).

After ascertaining the ‘drawing room’ was safe, he walked across the hallway and tried the door that led into the garage from this side. This house was one of many that had originally housed those who couldn’t afford to live in Mantle a hundred years ago, and so instead headed out towards Alsius, where it was cheaper; now, these houses had all been extended and were highly in demand, as they lay now, naturally, on the edge of Atlas. As such, this house had a few weird extra doors that at some point or other had led outside but now simply led to another room. Clover let himself into the garage and was immediately aware of how cold it was, so he shut the door behind him, flipped on the fluorescent tubes and turned off the light from his scroll.

The garage was the only other place in the house where something was plugged in and kept on constantly, and it was a high-powered computer that acted as a server for all of Clover’s father’s machines, which he built and played with and engineered as his stress relief from working difficult hours as a soldier for Atlas. Clover respected his dad a great deal, and looked up to him, but sometimes his dad’s lax discipline with unplugging computers was a little much. The server PC was actually inaccessible from in here: it had no monitor, and was all run in a virtual environment upstairs. Clover left the humming machine with its flashing coloured lights alone, checked the other sockets, and passed through the other door from the garage (save the big roller door that led to the outside world) into the kitchen, turning off the lights as he left.

The kitchen was where Clover’s mom spent most of her day, and she was brilliant at switching everything off for his sake. He still checked everything over (because it was _his_ responsibility to make sure he didn’t cause any accidents) but wasn’t surprised to find nothing left on or even plugged in. The torch on his scroll once again lighting his way, he circled around through the other kitchen door so he was back in the hallway, and passed into the main living room. This room, unusually for a family sitting room, had long, thick blackout curtains over the glass French doors that led out onto the garden patio. This was because of the house’s unique disadvantage – unique insofar as it didn’t apply to the majority of houses in Atlas, anyway. Clover checked each socket, and aside from having to unplug the (switched off) side table lamp, Clover could finally relax. He checked his scroll for the time. The whole exercise had taken him twenty minutes.

Clover couldn’t resist, however, slipping behind the curtains and almost pressing himself to the glass. Light hit his face, purplish-white, and he looked past his own reflection out into the patio and beyond. The fence at the end of the short patio didn’t back onto someone else’s patio, since this house was at the edge of the floating city – instead, all that lay beyond Clover’s childhood home was a few kilometres of something close to wasteland, power lines for the neighbourhood running over them, the city monorail high above supported by huge columns at regular intervals. Clover gazed out at all the _electricity_ that they were so close to and got the urge to shut it all off, knowing it was irrational but not able to fight it.

A sudden flash of white, brighter than the usual illumination, exploded next to the power lines and Clover could have sworn he saw something move out there. No way. No way.

No _way_.

His blood felt like ice. Something, maybe someone, someone, a person, was out in that electricity and they’d been shocked because he’d decided to look out. He dug his fingers into the tops of his thighs, feeling the rabbit’s foot and the card of clovers under his palms. It was his fault and his Semblance _hadn’t_ protected anyone and it was his fault. He grasped a hand at the handles of the French doors. It was locked, but the key was kept in the lock, so he twisted it and heard the latch _click_ before stepping out onto the patio.

Outside was cold but fortunately dry, especially given Clover’s lack of shoes. The bright motion floodlight came on as he crossed to the back fence, but he ignored it. The fence came up to about his nose, so he hooked his hands over the top of it and sort of pull-pushed himself until his arms were fully extended, but now with his hips at the top of the fence too. Carefully, as so he didn’t drop anything from his pockets, he leant forwards until he was horizontal, and then quickly lifted and twisted one of his hands. Now, he could rotate his body so he was parallel to the fence, and then he twisted his other hand, so he was perpendicular again, just this time with his legs not over his parents’ land. Finally, Clover pushed himself off of the fence and landed neatly on the earth of the wasteland beyond.

Atlas Academy prep was serving Clover well, clearly. He set off at a jog for the next four hundred metres, until he reached the electricity pylon closest to where he’d seen the explosion of light. Fortunately, his house wasn’t near a substation, just this towering metal pylon, so he wouldn’t have to break in anywhere. Clover scanned the ground nearby, looking for the person who he’d managed to injure.

He knew it didn’t make sense, not really, not with the lines up so high, but that didn’t matter to the bigger part of his mind, the part of him blaming himself for whatever went wrong because he wasn’t good enough to protect people, and he blanched when his eyes settled on a small black mass around fifty metres from him. He ran to it. Not a person. No, it was… Clover dropped to his knees.

It was a bird. A small blackbird of some kind. A rook? Or a raven? No, he thought they were bigger. It was barely bigger than a pigeon, really. It was a crow. _Bad luck_ , something warned in his head, but he reminded himself of the weight of the trinkets in his pockets and ignored the thought. Gently, very gently and gingerly, Clover reached a hand towards the poor bird, lying dead on the earth. His fingers brushed its body. He’d killed a bird.

The crow made a very weak noise, like a crowing that had been choked off after a split second. Clover’s eyes widened, and he moved his other hand to the bird too, cupping it carefully and picking it up. He slid two fingers out so they were underneath the crow’s head, which just rested limply against Clover when he did so. Now, Clover could feel the bird’s heartbeat, barely there. Clover stood. He had no idea how to give first aid to an electrocuted crow, but he couldn’t leave it out here to die. He had to at least take it into the warm. Maybe up to his bedroom. Clover deserved to have to watch it die, since it was his fault. Clover swallowed hard, and began jogging back to the fence he’d need to climb over with this bird in his hands.

Clover had amplified his Semblance as much as he could with his Aura when he’d dragged himself back into his patio with just one hand, hoping he’d neither drop the bird nor make too much noise. It seemed to have worked, and he quietly slipped back into the house, locking the French doors and checking the handle multiple times. He sat down on the sofa for a minute, the bird in his lap, and searched on his scroll for any advice he could find on how to care for it. It didn’t seem to have anything broken, or be bleeding, which Clover thought was a little odd given the height it had fallen from after the electrocution, but its heart certainly wasn’t beating right and its breathing didn’t feel too good either. All he could really think to do, even after searching, was to keep the bird warm, and give it food and water to access if it could take it. Beyond that, it would just be luck as to whether the bird survived the night.

Clover thought he’d done a good job, given it was closing in on three in the morning and he’d never cared for a bird before in his life. He’d taken the biggest Tupperware box that was in the kitchen, put a teatowel in it, and then laid the bird in the middle of the box. Then, he’d taken two small ramekins, filled one with water, and one with unsalted peanuts, which he crushed a little in case the bird wasn’t up to whole ones at the moment. He put the two ramekins in the corners of the Tupperware close to the crow’s head, so it could access them if it wanted. Finally, Clover had carried the box with the bird in upstairs, setting it down on his bedside table, which was close to the radiator. He used the light from the screen of his scroll, rather than the torch, to check the bird over. Its midsection was still rising and falling, which was a good sign. Clover went and washed his hands, knowing that if that finally woke someone up, it wouldn’t seem unusual, replaced all his lucky trinkets in their places, and then finally got back into bed.

Just because he was back in bed, though, didn’t mean Clover would fall back asleep straight away. He reached out to the side of his bed and couldn’t help letting his fingers drift down onto the feathers of the crow, stroking it gently. It shivered lightly under the touch, and only when Clover really felt tiredness tug at his eyes did he retract his hand. At 05:00, when Clover’s second night alarm went off for him to go and check the power sockets again, the bird had moved slightly and was still breathing, so he considered his efforts so far a success. He was back in bed in a mere twelve minutes.

When Clover woke up at eight, sunlight was leaking into his room around the edges of his curtains. Today was Saturday, so no school, naturally. Clover rolled out of bed and checked on the bird. It was standing up in the box, pecking at the peanuts. The sight made Clover smile, and he pulled open the curtains. The crow turned to watch.

“Good morning, crow,” Clover said, voice a little sleepy. “You look like you feel better. I’m so, so sorry about what happened to you. It was my fault. But I’m so glad you’re alive.” The bird stretched out its wings a little. Obviously it couldn’t reply, so Clover continued:

“I thought it would take days until you were well. But you seem pretty… chirpy. Maybe I can set you free sooner than I expected. I guess you’d like that, huh? Nothing else bad will happen to you if I’m not involved.” The bird twisted its neck slightly, almost as if it was trying to make eye contact with Clover, which was hard because its eyes were on the side of its head. Weirdly – and this was the first time Clover had noticed – its eyes were a glittery red, rather than the black he expected from birds. They were really quite striking.

“Anyway. I’m going to grab a shower and then get dressed. Then I’ll be back and see how you’re doing.” Clover grabbed his towel that was hanging on the hook on the back of his bedroom door and left the room. Whilst the kid was gone, Qrow ate a few more peanuts and drank some more of the water. Then, he hopped up and managed to extend his wings without hitting anything, flew across the room and perched on the post at the end of the bed. He looked at the posters the kid had pinned up around the room, Atlesian video game titles and a blueprint for an Atlesian Colossus. From here, Qrow could only see the profile of the horseshoe amongst the lucky charms he knew were resting atop the chest of drawers. _Poor kid must be cripplingly superstitious_ , _blaming himself for what happened to me,_ Qrow thought. If the kid knew who Qrow was – not like Qrow would let him find out – he’d know it was all 100% the patented Qrow Branwen touch that had made him slam into that power line.

Clover returned to his bedroom with his towel secured around his waist, hair damp and looking overall refreshed. He wondered how long his absence had seemed to the bird: Clover was sure he’d read somewhere that smaller animals perceived the passage of time differently to Humans and Faunus. Much to Clover’s surprise, the crow had left the box, and was sitting on the post at the end of his bed. Clover smiled.

“You _are_ way better! I’m so glad,” Clover said, and he started opening drawers to retrieve underwear, socks and a t-shirt. He put them on, and then retrieved his jeans from his wardrobe. When he looked back at the bird, it was staring out the window, almost as if it was deliberately trying to preserve Clover’s modesty while he dressed. Clover was amused at the thought.

“You want to get back outside? Are you sure you’re well? You went through… a lot.” The bird, naturally, didn’t reply. It stretched its wings out to their full span.

“You don’t look hurt, I suppose. Alright,” Clover said, and he walked over to his bedroom window. He took the little key from the small pot on the windowsill, and slid it into the lock. The window unlatched with a light _thunk_ and Clover pushed it open as wide as it would go. The crow flew over, and landed on the windowsill. It tilted its head up towards Clover.

“Well, I’m sorry for what I did to you. At least you’re better. I hope you can stay safe out there.” The bird walked closer to the window, and hopped over the small white plastic ridge that connected the window to the sill.

“Goodbye, crow. And, uh, good luck,” Clover said, and he smiled at the bird, which spread its wings and took off from the windowsill.

Clover thought about the bird a lot that day. His mom called him down for breakfast about ten minutes after the bird had left – eggs and bacon and hash browns – and he’d decided not to mention the crow he’d met last night. To be honest, as he sat at the breakfast table and his mother remarked how he must have been _very_ quiet when he checked all the sockets last night, since even she hadn’t woken up, he began to think it may have been a dream, but returning upstairs to brush his teeth, he saw the box and proved to himself he hadn’t hallucinated the entire thing. He’d take the box and the other stuff downstairs when nobody was in the kitchen later to clean it.

Clover came back at about a quarter past five after two hours of badminton, and he headed up to his bedroom after a check of all the sockets in the house to play some video games until dinner was ready in a couple of hours. Just when he’d booted up _Heavyweight Legacy_ , his attention was grabbed by a tapping at his window, and he dropped his controller to the bed in surprise when he looked round. The crow was on the outside windowsill - he recognised its eyes - and was tapping something held in its beak against the window. Clover practically jumped from his bed over to the window, and gestured for the bird to shuffle across to Clover could open the window without knocking it off. The bird obeyed. People did say crows were smart, Clover thought.

When the window was open wide enough, the crow entered Clover’s bedroom, hopping over the windowframe’s ridge again, and it then flew over onto the bed, next to Clover’s controller. Clover came over and sat next to it. It bumped whatever was in its beak against the back of Clover’s hand, and Clover, puzzled, looked down. Whatever it was, it was silver and shiny. Clover opened his hand, palm flat, and the crow deposited the trinket.

Clover picked it up with the thumb and forefinger of his other hand. It was a pin badge. It had a hallmark stamp on the back, proving it was sterling silver. The shape was a stylised four-leaf clover, two little diagonal points at the tips of each leaf, the veins down the middle of each leaf embossed as a thin line, creating a plus-shape across the entire badge.

“Is this for me?” Clover asked, feeling a little stupid. But the crow crowed.

“Where did you get it? You must have stolen it. You stole me a badge.” The crow crowed again, but this time it shifted and took off from the bed, flying to rest atop Clover’s chest of drawers. It pecked at the trinkets sitting atop it. Clover was stuck halfway between thinking this was amazing, and that he was going crazy.

“You brought me this for good luck. Do you somehow know crows are supposed to be bad luck?” Clover said, and the crow crowed softly once more. It flew back onto the bed. Clover reached out a hand and fluffed the crow’s head-feathers with his fingertips.

After a minute or so of petting the bird, it hopped away from Clover’s touch and flew back onto the windowsill. Clover stood up and walked over.

“Thank you, crow. It’s a lovely badge. I just hope I never meet the person you stole it from. The crow ruffled its feathers, and looked at Clover for a few more seconds before hopping out the window and taking off. Clover watched until the bird was out of sight, and then pulled his window shut. He examined the badge once more, and then pinned it to his t-shirt, over his heart. The bird had really made him feel all warm and fuzzy, in a weird way. It was just a bird.

Later that night, lying in his bed before he went to sleep, Clover looked up what it meant if a crow had red eyes, but brushed off the fact he got no results.


End file.
